Russia Annexes Crimea
Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, the first forcible annexation of European territory since 1945. The trigger was the collapse of Viktor Yanukovych's government in Kyiv on 22 February after three months of protest on the Maidan and the deaths of around a hundred demonstrators. He fled to Russia, and Moscow treated the change as a Western-backed coup. Within days, armed men in unmarked green uniforms seized the Crimean parliament, the airports and the approaches to the peninsula. Vladimir Putin denied for weeks that they were Russian soldiers and confirmed it afterwards. Crimea had been transferred from the Russian to the Ukrainian Soviet republic in 1954, had a Russian-speaking majority, and hosted the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol under a lease running to 2042. It was the one part of Ukraine where annexation had a plausible local constituency. A referendum was held on 16 March under occupation, with no international observers, no option for the status quo and a reported 97 per cent for joining Russia. The Crimean Tatars, deported en masse by Stalin in 1944 and returned since, largely boycotted it. The treaty of accession was signed two days later. The General Assembly declared the referendum invalid by 100 votes to 11. Sanctions followed, and Russia was expelled from the G8. Armed conflict began in the Donbas the following month, and the annexation is generally read as the opening act of the full invasion of 2022. Ukraine cut the North Crimean Canal, which had supplied most of the peninsula's fresh water, and Russia reopened it in 2022. Crimean Tatar institutions were banned and their leaders barred from returning. The Kerch Strait bridge, opened in 2018, became the only land link and a repeated target after 2022.
- Year: 2014 CE
- Category: Military
